gems, archaeology, archaeogemology, Harappan, Indus, ancient civilization, Pakistan, India

This book is an updated version of Randall Law’s Ph.D. dissertation, which was submitted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2008. He conducted the bulk of this research under the guidance of Professor Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, who is one of the most famous and active archaeologists in this field and co-director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project. Dr. Law’s intensive fieldwork took him across an area that ranged from the Northern Areas of Pakistan to Gujarat, India in the south and from the Makran coast of Balochistan in the west to the Aravalli Range in Rajasthan in the east. He has recently expanded his research activities to the eastern Arabian Peninsula. Along the way he collected geologic samples of rocks and minerals used by Harappans such as steatite, chert, limestone, agate, and copper. These samples were later directly compared to artifacts from Harappa using a range of methods such as X-ray diffraction analysis, electron microprobe analysis, Pb isotope analysis, and neutron activation analysis. I believe Dr. Law’s research goals dovetail nicely with those of our RIHN project and, thus, I have decided to publish his work as part of our Occasional Paper series.